The New Obama Fuel Compliant Car is here!!

Personally I want to let people have maximum choice in what to purchase, and nudging car makers toward fuel efficiency is ok with me if done in a reasonable cost-effective manner based on what is technically achievable. I don't know if 55mpg (Lab test) avg spec is reasonable (it is actually ~40mpg real world equiv.) and if allowances should be made for weight, size and vehicle class. Setting high goals is good, arbitrary "shoot from the hip" mandates are bad.

archer wrote: Sounds a lot like conservatives want to give the people what they think people want, not what people are looking for. As fuel prices rose people want better gas mileage. Making heavy gas guzzlers may appeal to some, but the market place wants more fuel efficiency. Clinging to gas guzzling behemoths almost killed our auto industry.

Once again innovation had made lighter vehicles safer by necessity because people demand it. We are perfectly capable of innovating around regulations, then everyone wins.

If it was so simple. Remember the days of low gas prices? Hummers? Domestic car companies were doing very well because most foreign companies couldn't compete with full size. Because of CAFE standards high gas mileage cars prices were subsidized. Example if you sold an Explorer with MPG of 10 you also had to sell a Fiesta that got 30 mpg to achieve Fleet fuel standards. Rewarding the thrifty who buy small vehicles.

Do you really think we will see such low gas prices again?

archer wrote: Sounds a lot like conservatives want to give the people what they think people want, not what people are looking for. As fuel prices rose people want better gas mileage. Making heavy gas guzzlers may appeal to some, but the market place wants more fuel efficiency. Clinging to gas guzzling behemoths almost killed our auto industry.

Once again innovation had made lighter vehicles safer by necessity because people demand it. We are perfectly capable of innovating around regulations, then everyone wins.

Tell you what archer - let's arrange to have a SmartCar run into the tail end of a Buick Sportwagon and see what happens. Then reverse them and have the Buick, with its steel bumpers and 400 cid cast iron block V8 run into the back end of the SmartCar. For an encore well take two more and crash them head on. Which one do you want to occupy for the tests? I've got a brand new bright shiny Roosevelt fiat dime that says we both would rather be in the Buick. Not only that, I've got another shiny Roosevelt fiat dime that says the Buick is repairable after each of the collisions and the SmartCar is totaled each and every time. Still thinking that everyone's wins with the car the federal regulations created?

Smart Car isn't American made...our regulations didn't create it.

Are you arguing for restricting the kind of cars Americans can buy?

“All things being equal in safety, bigger and heavier is always better. But among the smallest cars, the engineers of the Smart did their homework and designed a high level of safety into a very small package,” Lund said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24599768/ns ... ash-tests/

What this fails to take into account is the fact that while bigger and heavier is safer for the operator, it is more dangerous for the other car/driver that may be involved in an accident. Simply accepting bigger and heavier as better only works if all auto accidents are a matter of people driving into brick walls...but they don't...they drive into other cars. If we could reduce the mass of all vehicles on the road, we make it safer for everyone. Obviously, we need trucks and other large vehicles, so we can't just all drive micro cars...but in urban areas, if the overall size of vehicles decrease, they could be made to be safer for all. Remember, nobody ever says, "oh yeah, that accident was totally my fault"...people tend to see themselves as innocent, and it was the other guy's fault. Well if the other guy is driving a vehicle with 3 times the mass of your vehicle...then his poor driving is going to greatly impact you unfairly. It seems to me we can get a better grip on reducing fatalities by eventually moving towards driving smarter, more efficient vehicles, rather than by everyone driving bigger and bigger behemoths.

PS, are you really arguing newer cars don't last as long as older cars? It wasn't that long ago that you'd be doing well to get 100,000...maybe 150,000 miles out of a vehicle. Today's Hondas and Toyotas, and many others, will run 2-300,000 miles easy. I also find it hard to believe a modern design is less safe than older cars...with steel dashboards, lap seatbelts (if any), steering columns that were positioned perfectly to impale the driver, etc.

Bear, can you provide an example of a specific regulation that has hurt industry or employers, that doesn't serve some other purpose? Perhaps we can debate the specifics of whether a particular regulation does more harm than good, but just throwing out overall numbers of regulations, and overall numbers of predictions of money lost due to regulations doesn't really make the point well enough to me.

I posted this in other threads. Doesn't apply to cars, but regulations and red-tape in general.
And Hick is a Democrat, but he understands running a business. There is also a long report with lots of detailed examples.

DENVER — Monday, Jan. 9, 2012 — Gov. John Hickenlooper today unveiled recommendations to reduce government “red tape” and regulatory inefficiencies based on feedback from more than 100 business organizations, local governments, advocacy and community groups statewide.
“Red tape and unnecessary regulations are road blocks to economic development,” Hickenlooper said. “We need a government that is responsive to our concerns and priorities and spends our tax dollars wisely. That means government needs to know when to regulate and when to get out of the way.”

http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite/Go ... 1614803260

archer wrote: Do you really think we will see such low gas prices again?

I think we will see low gas prices again. Back when the prices spiked under Bush, the Economist wrote a series of articles explaining how we would never again have cheap oil, this was it, peak oil, etc. They were wrong. It went back under $2 a gallon.

30 years ago, 7 corporate oil companies controlled the market, they were efficient and innovative like corporations tend to be, now 80% of oil companies are state owned, Russia, Venezuela, Mexico, Arab nations. State firms tend to not be run as well, loaded up with patronage jobs, not willing to invest in new capital equipment, not as willing to try risky new technology.
Eventually they will have to get on the program, or some of these state owned firms might be spun off to increase revenue for budgets.

And the other development keeping oil prices high? In so many poor countries, gasoline is subsidized, so there is little incentive to buy high mileage cars. If prices are allowed to increase, demand will fall as those consumers have to cut back.

archer wrote: Smart Car isn't American made...our regulations didn't create it.

Fair point, but it is an example of the innovations that are created to comply with the 55mpg CAFE regulations. Why do we have airbags? Have you ever asked yourself that question archer? We have airbags because of CAFE. When the automobile manufacturers started removing mass from the vehicles, they became less safe for the occupants in a collision and more people were more seriously hurt or killed when they were involved in an accident. The result was more safety regulations, airbags, an innovation created to deal with regulations, themselves becoming required as a result of regulations, driving up the cost of the car yet again. As CAFE has increased, more mass has been removed from the vehicles, requiring more airbags and the introduction of something called crumple zones. Now, I will grant you that the existence of crumple zones in the car lessens injuries sustained in vehicles that have significantly less mass to comply with the CAFE laws, but the other result of having them is that the car itself is more likely to be damaged beyond repair in a collision.

Move vehicles totaled instead of being able to be repaired drives up the cost of insurance to operate the vehicle because the insurance companies have to pay out a higher cost to replace the car instead of a lower cost to repair the car. This takes money out of the middle class budget, making the middle class poorer than it used to be. The vehicle is more expensive to purchase, more expensive to maintain, more expensive to repair, and more expensive to insure. All of which reduce the vitality of the middle class and all because of federal laws which dictate what the fleet mpg of an automobile manufacturer will be.

archer wrote: Are you arguing for restricting the kind of cars Americans can buy?

No I'm not, which is why I stand opposed to CAFE instead of supporting it. It may have escaped your attention, but you can no longer buy a Buick Sportwagon because it was regulated and legislated out of the automobile market by the federal government a long time ago. CAFE restricts the kind of cars Americans can buy, that's the whole purpose of the law for crying out loud.